Cover Story: Journeys to the Future
The Blind Will See Again
By Olga Sorkine
What is the most important question to be solved in the future:
by your discipline? How to create a human-computer interface that would allow direct transfer of mental visual ideas from man to machine.
by research in general? How to make human life on earth sustainable, so that an equilibrium with nature is achieved and the destructive consumption of resources is stopped.
Which ground-breaking invention do you hope will be made within the next ten years? An artificial human visual system that would give vision to the blind.
Which ground-breaking invention do you fear could be made within the next ten years? Remote control over the human brain.
Which problem of the future cannot be solved by research? The moral evolution of mankind – this has to do with education and communication between people and cannot be solved by science alone.
Please complete the sentence: In the future, the world will be different from today because … technological possibilities and access to information will be practically endless, limited only by moral and social boundaries.
What is your favourite piece of Science Fiction? “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury. I like it because of its delicate, yet profound reflection on human nature and the fragility of our world, in spite of or maybe due to technological empowerment.
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